These 15 Successful Startups Were Built With Outsourced Development

Starting a venture and developing your product or service requires working quickly and efficiently. You need to ensure your startup offers value in terms of innovation, quality and convenience, even though you have limited resources and may be racing against the competition to be first to market.

So, how do you strike the perfect balance?

It’s up to the talent you bring in to make this happen. The problems are you may have limited resources to hire talent on a permanent basis until you're start-up is established. There is an alternative approach that many companies have actually used during the startup phase: outsourced development.

While this may be little known, here are 15 large startups that have succeeded using this strategy to launch their highly-valued businesses:

1 - Slack: Now valued at nearly $3 billion, this company used outsourcing to develop its solution in its earliest days.

2 - Fab: This large startup partnered with outsourced developers to maximise funding while scaling up when their business showed signs of growth.

3 - Skype: They used a team of developers in Estonia to help them build out their business.

4 - Klout: To get its technology in the right place before launch, Klout relied on many outsourced developers.

5 - AppSumo: The company has used many freelancers in various fields, including marketing, content and IT to grow its business.

6 - Github: The company has used numerous people who completed development work virtually from home.

7 - Basecamp: The same practice of outsourcing worked for Basecamp as it developed itself into a technology leader.

8 - MYSQL: From the start, the company believed and proved the success of a growth strategy that included using a mostly outsourced staff in various countries to ramp up operations in each location.

9 - Gliffy: This web-based diagramming tools company has turned to outsourcing for specific aspects of its technology development.

10 - Axeda: The company relied on developers to create the software and platform to offer its cloud-based solution.

11 - Net2Text: The company outsourced the development of its mobile payment platform.

12 - Mailburn: This iPhone email client solution developed thanks to a partnership with an outsource service provider that helped with many of the technical aspects of the solution.

13 - Mindspark: This mobile app development company has used outsource providers to create its business and many of its current apps.

14 - Squawker: This company partnered with an outsource provider to build its platform solution.

15 - Github: The company has used numerous people who completed development work virtually from home.

These startups and many others have recognised the value that outsourcing brings. The primary driver is that outsourcing costs startups much less an in-house team. Outsources come with skills already in place, so you do not spend time training. The low costs and knowledgeable talent means you can get infrastructure developed faster and your company launched sooner.

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